Politics: Asking for a Friend

My mother’s neighbor of 30-plus years called her recently. My mother was expecting an invitation to come over and get some fresh eggs from the chickens, but her neighbor had other things on her mind: “I need to ask you about politics. What are you going to do in November? I’ve voted Democrat for years, but my son is a conservative. I’m looking at our options, and I have never felt so confused and powerless to make a choice. What do you think?”

Aren’t religion and politics the two topics you don’t bring up in polite conversation? At the moment, no two topics seem to divide America more. Yet I can’t help but wonder if conversations like this one mark a new era in our civil discourse—an era that, against all expectations, holds forth hope and opportunity.

I am currently planning a new communication course on civility. Dialogic civility begins with the moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre’s observation that the Western world now exists “after virtue,” beyond agreement about what is true, right, or desirable. He diagnosed the condition of our civic arena as “emotivism,” with people acting solely upon their individual desires and preferences. In recent years we’ve witnessed the fallout of emotivism in political campaigns, leadership failures, church conflicts, and major corporate blunders. With individualistic decision-making at the helm, it is no wonder our outlook on politics, like our outlook on many other communal endeavors, often lies shrouded in cynicism.

But how do we get from cynicism to hope? In their book Dialogic Civility in a Cynical Age: Community, Hope, and Interpersonal Relationships, Ronald C. Arnett and Pat Arneson make the case that cynicism springs not from pessimism, but actually from optimism. Routine cynicism indicates the frustration of unduly high expectations. To paraphrase, it’s becoming disillusioned—abandoning hope in the clarity of an optimistic vision. One of the positive sides of disillusionment is an invitation to change our focus of attention. In theological terms, perhaps disillusionment can awaken us to idolatry—a demand that a particular aspect of God’s creation be something it never could or should have been. And in that sense, I wonder if the political disillusionment we currently experience may actually offer a gift.

It is all too easy to operate on abstract and polarizing notions of “politics,” forgetting that politics is fundamentally a matter of how we live together with others. As David Koyzis notes, politics harbors multiple ideals of what we think the perfect image of America or Canada or some other country can be. As those visions congeal into idols, they lead us subtly away from the real, ordinary, perversely difficult task of dealing with other people. If heaven is an America run on a particular party line, then Jean-Paul Sartre was right: “Hell is other people,” people who interrupt “my” vision of what a country should be.

That applies to communities of faith too. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in Life Together that obsession over forming a genuine Christian community is one of the biggest obstacles to the actual formation of that community. Our visions of what the church should be routinely get in the way of our ability to handle the church as it is. So, paradoxically, the church needs frustrations, setbacks, and sin and repentance in order to stay healthy. Cracks in the veneer of manmade perfection offer gifts of disillusionment that keep a community of faith alive.

This is not a cry against visions of healthy communities or a noble political order—hopes we desperately need to keep alive. I merely want to pose a question: What personal vices might we glimpse when we allow this frustrating election season to plunge us momentarily into political disillusionment? Idolatrous faith in the persona of a particular candidate? Idolatrous longing for a pristine vision of what our country once was or should be? Idolatrous fear of the quasi-omnipotence of a vaguely nefarious “them” who control everything from the news to the weather?

And what does it mean to pray “Your kingdom come” in such a moment—a moment in which God has not promised either to appoint my ideal of a political leader (perhaps not even the lesser of two evils!) or to provide me a private escape ramp up to the new heavens and the new earth?

MacIntyre said his goal was not to help people agree more but to help them disagree more productively. Living in this moment offers us a profound chance to talk frankly with our neighbors and friends about our inability to agree on a candidate, a political platform, or even a coherent vision for a country. Such a conversation moves from attentiveness to questioning to the possibility of temporal answers: (1) What are the concerns of this historical moment? (2) What ground does my neighbor stand on? (3) What ground do I stand on? and (4) What options for action, belief, and understanding emerge from this difficult moment?

What do the politically disillusioned often say? They no longer feel at home in their own country. If we could only sit in the bitter dregs of that truth long enough to encounter its revelatory balm—“for here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come” (Hebrews 13:14). Oh, that we who are so at ease would learn again what it means to walk as strangers and exiles, that we would apply Geerhardus Vos’s admonition to “carry a heaven-fed and heaven-centered spirit into our walk and work below.” That upside-down, topsy-turvy Christian walk will most certainly draw questions from our neighbors.

References

Arnett, Ronald C., and Pat Arneson. 1999. Dialogic Civility in a Cynical Age: Community, Hope, and Interpersonal Relationships. State University of New York Press.

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. 1954. Life Together. Translated by John W. Doberstein. HarperCollins.

Koyzis, David. 2019. Political Visions and Illusions: A Survey and Christian Critique of Contemporary Ideologies. 2nd ed. IVP Academic.

MacIntyre, Alasdair. 1990. Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition. University of Notre Dame Press.

MacIntyre, Alasdair. (1981) 2007. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. 3rd ed. University of Notre Dame Press.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1989. No Exit: And Three Other Plays. Vintage.

Vos, Geerhardus. (1922) 2020. Grace and Glory: Sermons Preached at Princeton Seminary. Banner of Truth Trust.